"Viral" ad campaigns: everybody's sick of them! What to do? Just think of a more appealing name for them. Because appearance, not reality, is what matters, and if you agree with that you just might have a future in advertising. "Viral" campaigns are now called "Dandelions," because they flutter beautifully across the landscape, sowing their brand messages that will grow into beautiful brand flowers. This, according to a new agency that is perfecting the art of being a smart sellout: The agency is called Dandelion, of course, because why let someone else run off with your awesome viral marketing analogy? And Dandelion is not a vulgar "ad" agency; rather, it is a "brand storyteller." For reals. All your favorites are lining up for some of that sweet marketing budget pie:

Mark Cuban, the loud-mouthed tech entrepreneur, short-lived reality TV star, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and occasional blogger, has been charged with insider trading by the SEC. [WSJ, NYP, Dealbreaker]

Good morning and happy Monday, dear friends. I may or may not have had a few drinks with the author of Gossip Girl over the weekend, so you'll excuse me if I quietly explode on the ground. While I'm doing that, you can entertain yourselves with blind items about a relapsed actress, a too-grabby actor, and, yes, a secretly gay actor. Shock! 1) "Which recently rehabbed actress is still dabbling in the hard stuff? Whatever she put up her nose the other night was so toxic, it melted the Blackberry screen she was using to cut up her drugs." [NYDN] 2) "Which leading man's pervy behavior got out of line? On an upcoming episode of this drama series, he has a physically intimate scene with a female costar. The actor kept insisting that his sexual fondling of her wasn't quite perfect and demanded multiple takes. The female costar was furious over the pervert's actions, but kept her temper on set. However, she did call the producers into a closed door meeting afterward to read them the riot act. The show's scribes have since been instructed to cut her relationship with the lead short." [BlindGossip] 3) "Which Hollywood hunk has a secret boyfriend? The hoards of women vying for his attention will be blubbering into their hankies." [Mirror]

♦ Lenny Kravitz has slashed the price of his SoHo penthouse yet again. Most recently listed for $18.75 million, the loft on Crosby Street is now on the market for just $14.995 million. [Curbed, Corcoran]
♦ Hedge funder Scott Bommer and his wife Donya are looking to unload another eight-figure apartment. The Bommers set records when they paid $46 million for a co-op at 1060 Fifth in January and then sold it for $48.5 million a few months later. Now they've put their 29th-floor apartment at the Ritz-Carlton on the market for $35 million, less than four months after purchasing it for $28.5 million. [NYT, Corcoran]
♦ Sundance Film Festival co-director Geoffrey Gilmore and film producer Julie le Brocquy have paid $2.475 million for a three-bedroom condo at 25 Central Park West. [Cityfile]

Brooke Astor died last year at the age of 105. If you looked at the papers with any regularity in the months that proceeded and followed her passing, you're probably familiar with the controversy involving Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, who was accused of neglecting his dying mother, forcing her to change her will, and plundering her estate. New details surrounding Astor's final days are now emerging with the publication of Mrs. Astor Regrets by Meryl Gordon, several passages from which were excerpted in the Post over the weekend.

What could be a nicer way to ease into the week than seeing Chace Crawford's adorable face pout in pseudo-concentration as he applies himself to a fashion quiz put to him by a kindly patronizing lady from Grazia magazine? Chace doesn't get many of the questions—Which are the world's fashion capitals? What is the difference between a wedge and a stiletto? Who is Alexander Wang?—right, which should establish his heterosexuality once and for all. Even if the snugness of his t-shirt and the prettiness of his bangs might beg to differ.

• Apparently Courtney Love said something about being suicidal amid her 60 (!!) blog posts Sunday but she also said her mood was "pirate" (good, right??) and that "ebaz and mj dresses saved my life." Also putting on a dress made her feel pretty. Also: "Dada, circus."

How are champagne manufacturers expected to fare this holiday season now that the economy is in a tailspin? Not well, unsurprisingly. "It's hard to imagine it will be anything other than horrible," says one expert. [AdAge]

There you were thinking that seeing celebrities with ten-piece sets of Louis Vuitton luggage, or people with more money than style attired in outfits emblazoned with Versace medusa heads, was merely an assault on one's fashion sensibilities. But it turns out that fashion emblems may be worming their way into our consciousness and influencing our behavior without us even knowing about it. Rob Walker reports on a study in which subjects were more likely to choose a certain brand of bottled water after being shown photos of people drinking it, even though they weren't aware of having noticed the brand.

It's been known for more than five years that Prince is a Jehovah's Witness who goes door-to-door trying to win converts to the austere faith, as mentioned in this week's New Yorker. Less appreciated: the musician's growing distance from the liberal artistic values that pervade show business, despite his move to Los Angeles seven years ago. As Claire Hoffman writes, Prince has a budding relationship with Christian conservative media mogul Philip Anschutz, of Denver, and seems to be opposed to gay marriage and adoption. These can' be popular views among Prince's fellow California-based rockers:

John Mack probably won't be celebrating much this year given the financial crisis, but the Morgan Stanley CEO turns 64 today. Also turning 64 on this Monday: SNL creator Lorne Michaels and Danny DeVito. Martin Scorsese is celebrating his 66th. Lauren Hutton is 65. Howard Dean turns 60. Former MTV House of Style host Daisy Fuentes is turning 42. Drag performer RuPaul, is turning 48. Isaac Hanson, of the Hanson brothers, turns 28. In the weddings department, hotelier Ian Schrager tied the knot with another former ballerina on Saturday night named Tania Wahlstedt. And Rob Speyer, the president of Tishman Speyer and son of real estate billionaire Jerry Speyer, married Anne-Cecilie Engell over the weekend.

♦ Is Kate Hudson trying to steal Alex Rodriguez away from Madonna? She was spotted with her "arms completely wrapped around" him at a party in Miami this weekend. But she might just be trying to steal Jason Statham away from his girlfriend, since the two were seen downing dirty martinis together. [NYDN, P6]
♦ A PETA activist pelted Lindsay Lohan with a bag of flour at an event in Paris on Saturday. Sam Ronson responded by dissing the activist on MySpace: "My dog is far more civilized than that person." [People]
♦ Kanye West was arrested in London on Friday after an altercation with a photographer. Now he's suggesting the entire episode was "bogus," and has upset some Brits by comparing himself to Princess Di. [People, The Sun]
♦ Sarah Palin may collect a $7 million advance if she writes a book. [MSNBC]

Amid all the hair-pulling over magazine and newspaper layoffs, Rupert Murdoch's speech broadcast in Australia Sunday sounds bracing: "Too many journalists — ...misguided cynics who are too busy writing their own obituary to be excited by the opportunity... — seem to take a perverse pleasure in ruminating on their pending demise," he said. "I believe that newspapers will reach new heights." But the News Corporation chairman's faith in the power of quality journalism and newspaper websites sounds an awful lot like McClatchy chief Gary Pruitt's iconoclastic (and now-ironic) defense of the industry back in 2006, in the Wall Street Journal:

♦ Goldman Sachs' seven most senior execs have decided to forgo their 2008 bonuses. The move was simply "the right thing to do," said a Goldman spokesman. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ JP Morgan may cut up to 3,000 people, or 10 percent of its global workforce, in the coming months. [Telegraph]
♦ Citigroup's CEO, Vikram Pandit, says the bank plans to eliminate another 50,000 jobs, and cut expenses by as much as 20 percent. [Bloomberg]
♦ UBS reportedly plans to lay off 30 percent of its investment banking division. [Dealbreaker]
♦ Japan has announced that it is officially in a recession. [Bloomberg]
♦ As for the U.S., 96 percent of the economists surveyed in a recent poll believe the economy is in a recession, and nearly three-fourths think it could persist beyond the first quarter of next year. [CNNMoney]

Barack Obama will not be permitted to bring his Blackberry with him when he moves into the White House in January, much to his dismay. He will have three full-time calligraphers on his household staff of 94, though, as well as 18 maids, seven butlers, eight electricians and four florists. [NYP]

Arianna Huffington is guest-hosting Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC tonight, and the lineup looks impressively ambitious: Google CEO Eric Schmidt, HBO talk-show host Bill Maher, stat-whiz Nate Silver and Cory Booker, the Newark mayor to whom the internet publisher was once rumored romantically linked (absurdly, her staff thought). The high-profile lefty gig is an appropriate laurel for an ambitious woman whose left-leaning site produced landmark coverage and gangbusters traffic amid the 2008 election. But as former Huffington Post staff can attest (and have), television appearances also mean a frenzy of last-minute research for editors like Roy Sekoff or Colin Sterling who prepare Huffington's talking points. With an entire, hourlong show to host, rather than a brief guest appearance, it would be reasonable for staff to fear another of the screaming, teary emotional breakdowns described to us by several former HuffPo staffers.

After seeing a fellow National Review columnist told off by her editor ("embarrassing and outrageous") and readers ("my mother should have aborted me ... I should 'off' myself"), neocon David Frum has decided he is taking his anti-Sarah Palin views and following Christopher Buckley out the conservative journal's door. And amid the nasty internecine feuding on the National Review's website and elsewhere, he sounds more than a bit scared of what's left of the crumbling conservative movement:

Did you think That One would need to be sworn in before he started breaking promises, to children, in front of TV cameras? It was all right there in front of Steve Kroft's face on 60 Minutes tonight, but he just smiled, from the tank. The "emotive" Associated Press, though, noticed Obama changed his tune on the show: The president-elect promised his daughters in his victory speech that a new puppy was "coming with us to the White House." Yet all of a sudden on 60 Minutes it's coming only after Obama gets "settled" in the White House — "late winter, early spring." Watch hope get sucker-punched, after the jump.

So it turns out "crazy" old Dan Rather has turned up some actual, you know, evidence for his theory of a vast right-wing conspiracy to take him down at CBS News four years ago: CBS memos show the guy who led the "investigation" into Rather's 60 Minutes story on the president's Air National Guard service was appointed after getting "high marks from the G.O.P." Another Republican was rejected after being deemed not sufficiently right-wing by a CBS lobbyist and executives. Craven CBS News suits even considered having Rather's work reviewed by Ann Coulter and various other terrible right-wing demagogues:

Hysteria over protecting children from the internet swept the Times' public editor column Sunday, when reporter Jodi Kantor was criticized by no fewer than three editors for sending Facebook messages to 16- and 17-year olds, trying to find parents to interview about Cindy McCain, wife of the former Republican presidential nominee. The political editor was scared for his own kids! The standards editor made a special new rule! The public editor said she should have run smarter Facebook searches and found the kids' parents! And yet none of them seemed particularly upset at the Times reporter who interviewed a 12-year-old, at home, without adult supervision.